Ever since the IRS stopped mailing income tax forms, I’ve been free-filing my taxes online with H&R Block. It’s been fine \u2014 or at least it was, until this year.<\/p>\n
For 2016, my withholding ended in “9.33” \u2014 but the taxes-owed number ended in zero. That meant technically I owed 67 cents, but since the online prep rounds the numbers, I was marked for the full dollar.\u00a0Then I got a very unwelcome alert message.<\/p>\n
“Since you contributed to a Health Savings Account (HSA), you’ll need to use H&R Block Deluxe to prepare this year’s taxes. Complete your return in H&R Block Deluxe for an additional $34.99.”<\/p>\n
This is not directly related to the Affordable Care Act, except inasmuch as HSAs have become more popular. But because I had an HSA, H&R Block saw fit to make me pay. It worked last year, so this is a change.<\/p>\n
But no one ever told the tech support people. I was on the phone for half an hour trying to find out if I could at the very least get a PDF of what I’d already entered. After much work, I did, sort of \u2014 as a 1040EZ, except you have to fill a full 1040 with an HSA (form 8889).<\/p>\n
The woman on the support line and I commiserated about the bait-and-switch. I told her I would put in a good rating for her if there was a survey after my call.<\/p>\n
“The phone survey system is not available at this time.” Click.<\/em><\/p>\n I laughed for a good long time. Then I got editable PDFs and filled in my numbers, to the cent, and paid my 67 cents, plus the 49 cents I had paid for the stamp, plus another 49 to mail the Iowa form since I wasn’t allowed to file that one electronically without the federal.<\/p>\n The check was cashed at the beginning of March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ever since the IRS stopped mailing income tax forms, I’ve been free-filing my taxes online with H&R Block. It’s been fine \u2014 or at least it was, until this year. For 2016, my withholding ended in “9.33” \u2014 but the … Continue reading